It is a measure of the significance of what happened that spring, that after 1989 and 1990, when communist regimes in eastern Europe began collapsing, China's Communist Party remains in place, ruling well over one billion non-citizens and sitting on hundreds of billions of US dollars. To attract those dollars, Britain, together with the US, has issued demeaning statements involving Tibet and human rights. The debate about how to handle the demonstrations split the higher echelons of the party. Party general secretary Zhao Ziyang argued with Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng for negotiations with the students and lost. He appeared in the square on 19 May, muttering through a megaphone, "I have come too late." We didn't know he was referring to the declaration of martial law the next day. Within a few days, Zhao, now deposed, became the focus of leadership wrangling about how much he should be blamed for the "disorder". By 1991, he had disappeared into house arrest. He died in 2005. Zhao's secret memoir, Prisoner of the State (Simon & Schuster), composed while he was detained and smuggled to Hong Kong, has just been published. It confirms his sympathy for the Tiananmen demonstrators and his misery as he heard the sound of gunfire from the square. "I told myself," Zhao whispered into a hidden tape recorder so as not to be heard by his guards, "that no matter what, I refused to become the general secretary who mobilised the military to crack down on the students. The students are only asking us to correct our flaws, not overthrow our political system." These statements are now widely available on the internet. When they are read in China, the regime will denounce them as fabrications or delusions, but they will arouse public feelings of uncertainty and anger against the leadership. It took Deng weeks to persuade army units from around China to come to the capital to crush the uprising. When they did this, on Saturday night and Sunday morning, 3 and 4 June, it was witnessed by scores of international journalists (and millions around the world watching television), who had spotted Tiananmen as a huge story in late April. Some set up their breakfast programmes to be presented from Beijing.

Mikhail Gorbachev came to Beijing on a state visit between 15-18 May. With the square in the grip of demonstrators, he had to be smuggled into the Great Hall of the People through the secret tunnels dug under Beijing especially to guarantee safety for the leaders in case of emergencies for his audiences with an embarrassed leadership. Gorbachev held a warm conversation on 16 May with Zhao Ziyang, who revealed that Deng Xiaoping, although retired, still made key decisions. (This was held against Zhao when he was axed.) I asked Gorbachev's press spokesman, Gennady Gerasimov, how his boss had enjoyed his discussions in Beijing. He replied, "Next time he comes here, except for Zhao, he hopes he never sees any of these guys." At his press conference, Gorbachev said that if such demonstrations had happened in Moscow, "I would have gone into the streets to talk with the people." He clearly imagined that the Beijing regime would not endure.